Living with Polar Bears
Page 2 of 7
Bruemmer: Whatever. Including polar bear. I’ve eaten a lot of polar bear.
PBI: What did it taste like? I’ve heard it tastes terrible.
Bruemmer: No, it didn’t taste terrible. But don’t forget I was living there for a long time, and if that’s the only thing you have to eat, it tastes good.
PBI: What was their housing?
Bruemmer: Tents.
PBI: Made out of what?
Bruemmer: Canvas. Sometimes skin tents, but mostly canvas.
PBI: Wasn’t it freezing?
Bruemmer: Yep!
PBI: You didn’t have the kind of equipment we have now, with sleeping bags rated to minus 30, and...
Bruemmer: Oh no, but we had much better. We had caribou furs. We slept on sort of snow platforms with furs on top, and then you sleep in between the furs.
PBI: How old were you then, in your 30s?
Bruemmer: Yes, I was in my mid-30s. And kept it up until I was in my 60s.
PBI: Were you married at that point? Leaving your wife for that long, how did that work? Did she understand what you were doing?
Bruemmer: Oh yes. And she also knew that I was a very sort of restless guy. I would never... well, sitting at home having a steady job didn’t appeal to me. She’s been wonderful about it.
PBI: I’m wondering where that restlessness comes from? Were you like that for as long as you can remember, that you just wanted to go do new things?
Bruemmer: Yeah, as a child I knew exactly what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a biologist and travel. That was my dream. And then the war came... I never finished high school.
PBI: Really? How did you learn to write the way you do?
Bruemmer: Just doing it. I read a lot and I read a lot still. I worked for newspapers and I studied in Paris later and took French. I write in several languages.
PBI: So you were largely a self-taught man?
Bruemmer: Oh yeah. You know, there are two professions that nobody gives a hoot how much academic background you have—one is writing and one is photography. If you take good pictures, nobody asks you whether you’ve been to Harvard. And if you write well and write what people want to read—what magazines want to have. I used to write a lot for Natural History in the States... it’s pretty much a Ph.D. magazine. But the first time I sent an article, they liked to use it and they sort of forgot to ask me what my academic qualifications were. And then I did a couple more. And then suddenly they said that I had to list all my qualifications. And I said, "Well, virtually zero." And I later knew the editor quite well and he said they had had a meeting and said, "Well, now what?" And the consensus was, since we check the stuff with our experts and they don’t object, why should we?
PBI: When you were still back in Latvia, you had to quit school because of the war?
Bruemmer: No, but then came the after-war years and I went to Canada to work. Europe in '49 and '50 seemed pretty much finished. It was devastated and there were these refugee camps, and everybody was crowded together in West Germany—people from all over Eastern Europe. And West Germany itself was kaput: it had been bombed, pretty miserable. So everybody tried to get out. So I got out to Canada; it was a good choice.
PBI: The way you describe it, it just sounds very bleak.
PBI: What did it taste like? I’ve heard it tastes terrible.
Bruemmer: No, it didn’t taste terrible. But don’t forget I was living there for a long time, and if that’s the only thing you have to eat, it tastes good.
PBI: What was their housing?
Bruemmer: Tents.
PBI: Made out of what?
Bruemmer: Canvas. Sometimes skin tents, but mostly canvas.
PBI: Wasn’t it freezing?
Bruemmer: Yep!
PBI: You didn’t have the kind of equipment we have now, with sleeping bags rated to minus 30, and...
Bruemmer: Oh no, but we had much better. We had caribou furs. We slept on sort of snow platforms with furs on top, and then you sleep in between the furs.
PBI: How old were you then, in your 30s?
Bruemmer: Yes, I was in my mid-30s. And kept it up until I was in my 60s.
PBI: Were you married at that point? Leaving your wife for that long, how did that work? Did she understand what you were doing?
Bruemmer: Oh yes. And she also knew that I was a very sort of restless guy. I would never... well, sitting at home having a steady job didn’t appeal to me. She’s been wonderful about it.
PBI: I’m wondering where that restlessness comes from? Were you like that for as long as you can remember, that you just wanted to go do new things?
Bruemmer: Yeah, as a child I knew exactly what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a biologist and travel. That was my dream. And then the war came... I never finished high school.
PBI: Really? How did you learn to write the way you do?
Bruemmer: Just doing it. I read a lot and I read a lot still. I worked for newspapers and I studied in Paris later and took French. I write in several languages.
PBI: So you were largely a self-taught man?
Bruemmer: Oh yeah. You know, there are two professions that nobody gives a hoot how much academic background you have—one is writing and one is photography. If you take good pictures, nobody asks you whether you’ve been to Harvard. And if you write well and write what people want to read—what magazines want to have. I used to write a lot for Natural History in the States... it’s pretty much a Ph.D. magazine. But the first time I sent an article, they liked to use it and they sort of forgot to ask me what my academic qualifications were. And then I did a couple more. And then suddenly they said that I had to list all my qualifications. And I said, "Well, virtually zero." And I later knew the editor quite well and he said they had had a meeting and said, "Well, now what?" And the consensus was, since we check the stuff with our experts and they don’t object, why should we?
PBI: When you were still back in Latvia, you had to quit school because of the war?
Bruemmer: No, but then came the after-war years and I went to Canada to work. Europe in '49 and '50 seemed pretty much finished. It was devastated and there were these refugee camps, and everybody was crowded together in West Germany—people from all over Eastern Europe. And West Germany itself was kaput: it had been bombed, pretty miserable. So everybody tried to get out. So I got out to Canada; it was a good choice.
PBI: The way you describe it, it just sounds very bleak.